Problem: $f(x) = \dfrac{ x + 1 }{ ( x + 1 )( x - 4 ) }$ What is the domain of the real-valued function $f(x)$ ?
Solution: $f(x)$ is undefined when the denominator is 0. The denominator is 0 when $x=-1$ or $x=4$ So we know that $x \neq -1$ and $x \neq 4$ Expressing this mathematically, the domain is $\{ \, x \in \RR \mid x \neq-1, \,x \neq4\, \}$.